Based on a study of a postgraduate course, we show how—through the processes associated with applying a strategic tool—students developed the understandings that allowed them to span disciplinary and organizational boundaries. We reveal how the students, working in groups and acting as consultants to industry clients, developed specific boundary-spanning skills learned through observation and practice (mimesis), and reflection. Namely, (1) working with others with different disciplines to establish roles and processes to operate successfully as a group, (2) establishing productive communication with other groups of diverse disciplines as part of project processes, (3) eliciting information from other groups of diverse specialists, and (4) managing an inclusive discussion process among other groups of diverse specialists for agreement. We discuss how these insights about mimesis and reflection add to pedagogic debates about instruction for interdisciplinary and inter-organizational learning and the implications for management education and development practice.
Abstract This study examines the organization impression management (OIM) tactics used in agri-food cooperatives to communicate their intentions toward sustainable development. Based on content analysis of the chairperson and CEO statements of 14 agri-foods cooperatives from six years' annual reports, this study sheds light on the role of member-owned firms in shifts toward realizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The paper proposes multistakeholder OIM tactics. These insights about sustainable development extend knowledge of how senior managers communicate their intentions in multistakeholder situations, which include shareholders, suppliers, customers, and local communities. This study contributes to the literature on organizational impression management and member-owned firms. Managerial implications are also outlined.
We test the relationship between alliance scope and firm performance in the context of the biotechnology industry by means of a meta-analysis. Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that allows a systematic review of the existing research that is more rigorously systematic compared to conventional narrative reviews as it uses statistics to capture the strength of relationships. The analysis confirms that a relationship between alliance scope and firm performance does exist. Furthermore, results suggest that there is a statistically significant difference in firm performance between exploitation alliances and exploration alliances, confirming recent studies in the innovation and R&D management literature. Managerial implications and future research suggestions are provided.
In this conceptual paper, we explore how individuals respond to a need to change when faced with the revelation of something undesirable about their social – and particularly organizational – conte ...
Search practices for accessing external knowledge are widely recognised as crucial for innovation. Geographic proximity, industrial clusters and relational proximity are argued as providing suitable conditions for searching, especially given the context/situation dependence of search practices. However, their influence on searching in emerging clusters requires elaboration. Taking the practice perspective, this study explores how geographic proximity, cluster life-stage and relational proximity influence search practices. Agents’ practices from an emerging biotechnology cluster are compared to practices from existing clusters. Experience-based differences in agents’ practices are theorised as regulars and strangers in cultural fields. Implications for cluster life-stage and relational proximity research, and public policy regarding cluster management are considered.
Innovation is of continuing interest to professional service firms (PSFs) and the scholars who study them. Nevertheless, innovation in PSFs remains underresearched within the wider canon of literature on service innovation, and existing studies typically take a firm-centric perspective on innovation, even though such approaches have been challenged extensively. Our study addresses the shortcomings related to service innovation research, particularly in the context of PSFs, by utilizing the service-dominant logic (SDL)—a framework considered particularly appropriate for understanding innovation in service from a customer-centric standpoint. We apply the SDL to a case of innovation in an engineering consulting firm, and we find that innovation in PSFs is, to a certain degree, unique. Specifically, this work contributes to the literature by identifying multiple beneficiary roles, termed “customer as payer” and “customer as end user,” with often competing and changing values in use. The notion of operant resources is extended to include social capital, and we show how social capital can enable innovation in PSFs. A preliminary model and five propositions that can guide future empirical research on innovation in PSFs, together with managerial implications, are delineated.
In the shift towards the knowledge economy, the increased role and value placed on science is associated with an increased medialisation of science. This paper examines how biotechnology is medialised in the context of New Zealand, a society whose knowledge-based development is characterised by belated political reforms, low to medium levels of R&D investment in general and low levels of industry-based R&D in particular. We apply three dimensions of medialisation – extensiveness, pluralisation and controversy – to examine how biotechnology has been medialised in New Zealand over a 15 year period. We discuss how knowledge-based development systems moderate the medialisation of science.
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